Orange sherbet

the cows come out at five
when the trees begin to lean
and look dreamily into ponds
at their vacillating reflections
which bend around a turtle’s head

the sun is orange at times like these
the buildings red, the shadows bleeding
and this color is just the perfect thing
to soothe subliminally the harsher shades
of the mid morning sun lancing painfully, attacking
the preceding cool blue hue which washes over the horizon’s hills
like an ocean’s tide in the quietest earliest newborn morning

but the morning is for leaving home
your bed cocoon and fever dreams
while the afternoon is
for leaning
back
leisurely
on your elbows
as the sun slips down into its bed
you smile through a cigarette
and drift back home with
an edifying weariness
into that halo’s sagging glow
the orange sherbet
sunset
home

“I become a silhouette”

Poems have a rhythm, yes–
a certain cadence, a measured step
horsehooves clipping urgently
while gunshots ring across the field
with mechanical rapidity, perhaps
best explained by trigger fingers
or the lightest hissing sound escaping
from barrel steam
which drifts inside
and covers me
like dirt, like dark,
like peace of death
as the echoes seem
to walk away–
I become a silhouette
(I’m talking about
that enduring silence)